“…Three Navy SEALs who faced courts-martial for allegedly abusing a terrorist and covering up the incident should be asking these questions. Last week, a military jury delivered the same verdict for Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe that two previous juries had given Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas and Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe — not guilty.
The charges against the three elite SEALs stemmed from the apprehension of Ahmed Hashim Abed in a daring nighttime raid in Iraq last September. Abed is believed to have led the ambush of a convoy in Fallujah in 2004, during which insurgents pulled four American military contractors — one a former SEAL — from their vehicles, brutally beat them to death, mutilated their bodies and hung the corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
McCabe was charged for — if you have a delicate constitution, stop reading here — striking Abed once in the midsection while he was in the SEALs' custody. Huertas and Keefe were charged with dereliction of duty for failing to prevent the alleged abuse and impeding the investigation into it.
In the civilian world, these charges don't sound like much. In the world of the SEALs, they lead to dead-end careers.
That was implicit in the offer from military brass scared stiff by the Obama administration's political correctness: acknowledge guilt and accept ruinous administrative punishment, or take your chances with a court-martial and end up in the brig. The SEALs, men of honor, chose to defend their names and try to continue serving the nation in the Special Operations Forces…’
Such is the situation in our point of history that the words of criminals hold more validity than those of the highly trained professionals who are paid to control them. Police, Security, Military personnel are all held in every facet of pop culture to be corrupt and inherently evil. This is political correctness at its worst. And it is being allowed to infect every facet of our lives.
Consider the Ft. Hood Massacre (no doubt that term will be downgraded to the more politically palatable “Shooting” before he goes to trial) Several people noticed Hassan’s erratically skewed Islamist outbursts. But nobody in the military command dared to breathe a word of their suspicions. Such is the nature of political correctness that we have driven a wedge between those that administer military programs and those who must act on those commands. There was a point in time where the front line personnel had reason to expect support from their commanders. But instead of military personnel in the Pentagon, we have creatures in uniform who seem far more concerned with their own careers than the safety and support of the front line personnel.
Make no mistake, this situation was not another Abu Ghraib, although no doubt that situation in a small way made this one possible. Then men accused in this case were not poor infantry personnel trained mainly to shoot and be shot at. Navy Seals are among the military’s elite services. They are highly trained in all matters military as well as the political expectations governing their actions. They act on black ops with full knowledge of the military and political implications of their actions. For the military to take the word of an avowed and captured terrorist over the reports of such highly trained personnel is the worst type of pandering to the powers of political correctness.
So where do these Navy Seals go to get their reputations back? Although exonerated, this court martial’s history will be a blot on their jackets. Such situations are career-enders. In addition, because of the highly skilled nature of their training, these men in normal circumstances would form the power elite at the upper echelons of command down the road. But that path is doubtful now due to a military upper command that is far more concerned with their polling than the actions and support of their personnel. I would hope that these men, having seen the worst of what a PC attitude can do will come into the public domain as candidates and advocates. They can testify on how far afield our country has flown from the solid application of Constitutional goals over interpretation.
If you look around you, this pandering to political correctness is responsible for many of the issues we face. We are not allowed to condemn those who come here illegally. We are not permitted to question the wisdom of gaming the system to get the most from the Welfare State without being branded as wrong. This court martial was just one case where we see an effort to vilify those who defend us by the very same people who would gladly sell the American people out for a few diplomatic dinners. We cannot allow this to continue. When you vote this year, remember how a regime of political correctness nearly sent good men to prison on a trumped up charge. And then remember who runs the show.
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